"He weighed a hundred and thirty-five," Graham admitted ruefully. "But he looked all right and fit at the start. I think I was more surprised than he when he turned up his toes." Graham shook his head. "It wasn't because he was a light weight and small. The small men are usually the toughest, other things being equal. But you've put your finger on the reason just the same. He didn't have the physical stamina, the resistance,--You know what I mean, Dick?" "In a way it's like the quality of muscle and heart that enables some prizefighters to go the distance--twenty, thirty, forty rounds, say," Dick concurred. "Right now, in San Francisco, there are several hundred youngsters dreaming of success in the ring. I've watched them trying out. All look good, fine-bodied, healthy, fit as fiddles, and young. And their spirits are most willing. And not one in ten of them can last ten rounds. I don't mean they get knocked out. I mean they blow up. Their muscles and their hearts are not made out of first-grade fiber. They simply are not made to move at high speed and tension for ten rounds. And some of them blow up in four or five rounds. And not one in forty can go the twenty-round route, give and take, hammer and tongs, one minute of rest to three of fight, for a full hour of fighting. And the lad who can last forty rounds is one in ten thousand--lads like Nelson, Gans, and Wolgast. "You understand the point I am making," Paula took up. "Here are the pair of you. Neither will see forty again. You're a pair of hard-bitten sinners. You've gone through hardship and exposure that dropped others all along the way. You've had your fun and folly. You've roughed and rowdied over the world--" "Played the wild ass," Graham laughed in. "And drunk deep," Paula added. "Why, even alcohol hasn't burned you. You were too tough. You put the other fellows under the table, or into the hospital or the grave, and went your gorgeous way, a song on your lips, with tissues uncorroded, and without even the morning-after headache. And the point is that you are successes. Your muscles are blond-beast muscles, your vital organs are blond-beast organs. And from all this emanates your blond-beast philosophy. That's why you are brass tacks, and preach realism, and practice realism, shouldering and shoving and walking over lesser and unluckier creatures, who don't dare talk back, who, like Dick's prizefighting boys, would blow up in the first round if they resorted to the arbitrament of force." Dick whistled a long note of mock dismay. "And that's why you preach the gospel of the strong," Paula went on. "If you had been weaklings, you'd have preached the gospel of the weak and turned the other cheek. But you--you pair of big-muscled giants--when you are struck, being what you are, you don't turn the other cheek--"